Three Little Birds
by VO1
Summary: Third in challenge: same vein as "The Lost Pleid" and "My Cherie Amour". Ami gets to pick whatever she wants as an anniversary gift. Without debate. Yes, I'm aware the title has nothing to do with the story but I'm stuck here.


Another challenge fic, set in Crystal Tokyo. Ties in with "Pop-tart Prediction" "My Cherie Amour" and "The Lost Pleiad" with the same characters.

* * *

The sky had begun to streak orange and gray, a mix of heat and cold in the frigid atmosphere, the last daylight glimmering before fading to night. Ami indulged herself for a few minutes, watching the light blending with the frozen sky while she tapped her pen against her desk. Her gaze dropped to the blue lights on her clock, and she started when she realized what time it was.

He was not back yet. That wasn't unusual, and she wasn't worried, but Germany was far away, and it was cold outside.

She powered down her computer; the maps and charts on the screen detailing the spread of communicable diseases across the European continent blinked off. For the hundreds of years that the Earth had been to sleep, three quarters of the human population had not survived, but those pesky little bacteria and viruses had. At least they weren't starting from scratch this time; she was proud to say that she was nearly eradicating malaria from the African continent.

She ran her hands down the front of her dress as she made her way to the playroom, idly wondering why she was trying to keep presentable when she most likely would be trashed in the next thirty minutes, anyway. Old habits, she thought. Sometimes she still thought that she could call her own mother, begging for advice or simply seeking comfort, before she remembering her mother had been dead for hundreds of years. She had not survived the sleep.

Not many people had.

The two younger children were right where she left them, playing with some toy that emitted light and sound and kept changing its own shape. The Queen must have invented it, since she couldn't think of anyone else who would take credit. Tristan was smiling as he hammered on a purple button, which emitted a clang like the ringside bell at a boxing match and sent an arc of blue light against the ceiling. Ophelia was watching him patiently while teasing her cat with a piece of string. Or rather, trying to tease him: Puck was a notoriously lazy cat, and he simply sat on his haunches and let Ophelia whack him in the eye repeatedly with the yellow yarn.

Part of her hated to call off their fun, but it was getting late. "Tristan." He smiled and climbed to his feet, lifting his behind in the air before using his short arms to push off the ground. She scooped him up in her arms.

"Would you like to help?"

Ophelia shook her head and turned her attention back to Puck. "Can I have some crackers?"

"Do you remember where they are?"

Her daughter nodded. "All right then. Please clean up if you make a mess."

Ami carried Tristan to the bathroom nearest the children's rooms, hoping that he wasn't in the mood for a long soak. She didn't think so; he was starting to yawn. "Mommy!" he squawked as she pulled off his clothes. "I found bird!"

She smiled, happy that his baby talk was giving away to complete sentences. It was hard to believe her baby was almost three; it seemed not long ago that she was carrying him in a sling across her chest, barely visible save for a few tufts of light brown hair. Poor kid had truly out of control hair: it stuck out at funny angles that couldn't be tamed, so they were forced to keep it cut short when it started attracting things like chewing gum and small twigs. Perhaps it would turn blue as he got older, as hers had done after the sleep. The Queen often said that Tristan resembled Ami the most, with his small button nose and wide, curious blue eyes. And like Ami in her youth, he was sometimes paralyzed by a crippling shyness that would render him speechless and fleeing to his parents' sides.

"Where?" she asked, filling up a baby tub with water and throwing a couple of toys in. He was getting too big for it, and quickly.

"Outside!" He was a child of few words, but this subject was too important for him to stop there. "Vander found it and it was red. Was it cold?"

"Cardinals?" Ami pondered. That was unusual, in this part of the world; she would have to look into it later. "No, they have feathers to keep them warm."

"OK," he replied, pouring cups of water out. She squirted some baby shampoo on her palm and started to work it on his head. A quick scrub down while he played with his measuring cups, and then she turned the handheld showerhead on.

"Shut your eyes." He slammed them shut immediately.

"NO face!" he whimpered as she started rinsing his hair off. He was terrified of getting shampoo in his eyes, even though it didn't sting. Zoisite had bravely tested it once, pouring it undiluted directly into his eye, and while it watered like crazy and made a terrible mess, he was pleased to report that it didn't leave him permanently blind.

_Just permanently stupid_, Ami thought to herself, grinning at the memory. He had been a nervous father, at first, and had used himself as a human guinea pig before he would try anything on their child. Spinach baby food had been particularly interesting.

Ophelia was waiting outside of the bathroom. "My turn?"

Ami put Tristan down on the ground, where he immediately threw off his towel and ran to his room stark naked. Typical boy. "I'm going to put your brother to bed, then I'll come to your room after your bath."

"OK, Mommy."

Tristan was already rummaging through a pile of laundry that his father had probably left on the foot of his bed. _Damn it, Zo. _The man was allergic to putting laundry away."Tristan, what are you looking for?"

"Yellow fish."

"They're right here." Ami pulled his yellow fish pajamas from the bottom of the pile and pulled it over his head. They had been Evander's, at first, and softened by hundreds of washings. She thought briefly of Makoto, and her seven daughters, and wondered how many sets of clothing had changed hands in their household.

After doing some calculations in her head, she made a mental note to simply call and ask later.

"OK, baby," she said, pulling him onto her lap. "Where did we leave off?"

He barely made it past the third paragraph before his mouth dropped open and his eyelids dropped shut. Gently, she pulled his covers back and slid him inside, smoothing down his flyaway hair and kissing him tenderly on the forehead.

Ophelia was waiting in her room, already dressed in her pink nightgown, sitting at her child-sized vanity and running a comb through her wet hair. She was trying to grow it long, _really_ long, she insisted, long like the Queen's. Ami stood behind her and buried her hands in the wet mass.

"Ready Freddie?" After years with Zoisite, the first thing she had picked up was his expressions.

"Yep."

She concentrated, and felt heat flowing out from her hands, drying her daughter's long hair in moments. She picked up a brush and began stroking it through the shiny brown waves, pausing when she hit a snarl. Ophelia was a pretty girl, with her mother's eyes and her father's smile, and she loved to change clothes several times a day, and always a dress. Serenity said that all six-year-olds were like that, but Ami secretly hoped that her daughter wasn't turning vain.

"Look what Mum Rei found," she said, holding something out to her mother. She called all of her aunts "Mum" for some reason: Mum Rei, Mum Mina, Mum Serenity, and had been doing it since she was old enough to talk.

It was a photograph, an old one, from before the sleep. Ami felt herself smile at the memory of the time, although she couldn't remember the event. Back in time, before she was a queen of Serenity's court, and a guardian to the budding new age, and Zoisite was still Zach, a neurotic med student and owner of a truly busted up Honda Civic, and not the ruler of the European Kingdom of Earth. They were so young, and laughing at something off-camera: Ami's hands frozen in mid-clap as she sat on Zach's lap. It was summertime, and judging by her haircut and clothing, sometime in their early twenties.

The memory hit her all of a sudden, and she started laughing softly to herself. Ophelia turned to stare at her, blinking her blue eyes.

"What is it, Mom?"

She handed the photograph back to Ophelia. "That was the day your father proposed to me. We had just graduated college, and we were visiting his Nana in San Francisco, and he took me to a park…" She shook her head, smiling. "It was a long time ago."

Ophelia was staring at the picture, her eyes darting around every detail as if memorizing it. "What did you say?"

Ami started laughing again and hugged her daughter from behind. "What do you think I said, you goof?"

Ophelia started giggling in the way she did, like a raindrops plunking down on a flowerbed. "I don't know!"

"Oh yes, you do! I said yes, and we told his Nana and she started crying and drinking and asking me when I was going to convert to Judaism, and then a year later we got married…" her voice trailed off as the realization hit her. "And today is our anniversary."

"Daddy forgot!" Ophelia gasped, probably remembering the time that Jadeite mixed up dates and threw an elaborate surprise birthday party for his twins, complete with hundreds of balloons and cupcakes and a ball pit, on his wife's birthday. The King had nearly wet himself with laughter, and Jadeite had to take Rei to Bali for two weeks to make up for it. Two years later, and it still hadn't ceased to be funny whenever someone brought it up.

In this case, however, Ami had forgotten too, but she decided to shift the blame over. "Well, Daddy's been busy lately. I'm sure he remembered."

Did he?

"Maybe he's doing something for a surprise, and that's why he's not home yet," Ophelia offered.

"Maybe," Ami agreed, settling down on the bed next to her daughter. Ophelia had a very frilly canopy bed that the Queen had given to her for her fourth birthday, with white gossamer trailing up the posts and pink sparkled pillows. Zoisite insisted that he developed diabetes any time he was in Ophelia's room for longer than five minutes. "Book or story?"

"Story."

"About what?"

Ami's daughter was silent as she pondered her choices. Puck the cat whomped noisily on the bed, wheezed a few times, and curled up on Ophelia's lap. "About when Daddy proposed to you."

That was something she hadn't thought about in a while, but the memory started to flow as she recalled that carefree time in her life. She could remember certain elements: the smell of Zach's car, Nana's matzo ball soup, the canned laughter of television sitcoms. They were so young, full of hope about the future, not knowing that in a short year, everything would change…

"I'm tired now." Ophelia was blunt to the point of being almost rude sometimes, but Ami could never be mad: she was often described the same way.

"OK." She pulled the covers up and kissed her daughter on the nose. "Sweet dreams. I love you."

She frowned upon entering the kitchen. Ophelia had lied; a pile of crackers and crumbs littered the counter. She would be having a talk with her tomorrow morning.

"Hey, can I have some of those?" Ami jumped as Evander pushed himself underneath her arm and stole a handful of crackers, cramming them into his mouth until his cheeks pocketed out like chipmunk. He reached for more.

"Manners, please!" Ami grabbed the box and held it out of his reach.

"Mom, I'm starving!" He was his father's son, from his curly, sandy hair and bright green eyes, right down to the way he tried to put his best pathetic face forward when caught doing something he shouldn't.

"Are you really?" Perhaps he was being truthful; he had just gone through a growth spurt that had shot him up three inches, and had him cleaning out the pantry practically every hour.

"Yes," he mumbled, spraying her with wet crumbs. She sighed and wondered if all twelve-year-old boys were like this. There was no one to compare him to; Mina's boys were still young, and she hadn't spent extensive time with civilian children.

"Go make a sandwich," she conceded, running a hand through his cropped curls. Evander ducked out of her reach; he had the problem of people touching his hair, but to many, including Ami, it was practically impossible not to run their fingers through the tight gold curls, marveling at the softness and shine. Makoto in particular was drawn to Evander's head, often lamenting the fact that the perfect spirals were wasted on a preadolescent boy while her own soft waves would start to frizz with the slightest touch of humidity.

Ami watched him pile on cold cuts until his sandwich resembled a pile of meat with incidental bread condiments thrown in. "Tristan tells me you saw a cardinal today."

"Is that what that red bird was? I didn't know. I never saw one like that before. It was sitting in a bush in the backyard, and we got to get pretty close to it before it flew away."

"Strange." Ami said, half to herself, reaching for a microcomputer that they kept on the counter. Mina had teased her about having a computer in every room in her house, and Ami had fired back by asking her why she had candles in every room in hers. To set the mood, the blonde responded, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. No mystery why she had five children already.

Ami did a quick search and pulled up an image of a cardinal. "Did it look like this?"

Evander glanced over while chewing a giant mouthful of sandwich. He nodded.

"Hmm," Ami said again, idly reaching for Evander's head while they stood against the counter.

"Mo-om!"

"Sorry, dear." She thought about pulling back, before deciding that giving birth to him gave her the right to touch his hair as much as she damn well pleased. She dug her fingers in farther, and though he rolled his eyes, Evander conceded and let her while he continued eating.

He had been an only child for half of his life, although it hadn't been intended to be that way. When he was born, she could hardly believe at first that she was a mother, and that the baby she held was hers, and Zoisite's, and that it was up to them to raise him into a fully functioning adult. He was adorable, and delightful, a carbon copy of his father, and they had made the decision early to have more. Fate and nature had different ideas, and it was six long years and two heartbreaking miscarriages before their little girl was born. They didn't have to wait as long for Tristan, fortunately.

"Can I play tonight?" He meant online video games with some civilian classmates of his, and was on strict rations after one caffeine-fueled session had lasted until dawn on a school night.

"Is your homework finished?"

He practically broke his neck rolling his eyes. "Of course! I wouldn't ask if it wasn't."

"One hour. Then you need to go to bed."

"Yes!" He was so excited he nearly dropped his plate. "When's Dad getting home?"

Ami glanced at the clock again. "Soon, I hope. He shouldn't be much longer."

"OK." She caught him in a hug before he could escape, pressing her lips to the top of his head. It wouldn't be long before he would be taller than her, especially if he kept eating the way he did.

"Ack, my neck!" So dramatic, this one.

"Good night, sweetie. Don't forget to brush your teeth." It seems ludicrous to her that Evander, a highly intelligent child under most circumstances, would need reminders like that. Twelve-year olds.

"I won't. Night, Mom."

She resisted the urge to start working again, and instead decided to unwind by taking a bath. He still wasn't home yet. Afterwards, she toweled off and threw a robe on, and picked up the picture again, sitting cross-legged on the bed. Her face had been a lot rounder back then, she thought as she studied it. She tried remembering more, seeking comfort in her memories, when she served a friend and not a queen, when she could go anywhere she wanted without a detail following, when she was just another face on a crowded planet going about her daily business.

But, she decided, smiling and putting the picture down on the bedside table, she would not trade her life now for anything in the world. She was a guardian of the new world and its fledgling population, like it or not, and proudly served her King and Queen; she would live the remaining years of her life, however many they would be, with the love of her life at her side, and her children…

How she cherished them.

She heard the door shut downstairs, and heavy footsteps jogging up the stairs.

"Hey there," she said as he entered the room, his clothing and hair streaked with drying mud. "What the—"

"Frozen water pump," he explained, kissing her on the mouth in greeting. "Busted all over the place. I couldn't leave the farmhands to fix it themselves; for one, they are completely freaking clueless, and second, the damn thing was about five feet underground. They would still be digging if I didn't unearth it." He pulled off his jacket and threw it down the laundry chute. "Kids in bed?"

"Except for Evander." She started unbuttoning his shirt for him. "I did takedown. You have setup tomorrow."

He threw his head back and sighed dramatically, his eyes wide, just like Evander had done before. The resemblance was downright eerie. "I hate setup. If I can't do Ophelia's hair the way she likes, she gets all…Rei."

"Well, then next time, say screw it to the water pump and come home earlier."

He grabbed her hands and pulled her body against her chest. "I want to screw something else."

She let him have one kiss before poking him in the ribs. "You're crude. And dirty. Literally. Go shower."

She was reading notes on her computer when he emerged from the bathroom, naked. Perhaps Tristan did take after his father in some respects. He threw himself on the bed, his hair wetly slapping against her bare legs as he tilted his head to look at her.

"I fucked up."

He was smiling, so Ami didn't know what he was getting at here. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Big time."

"Well, tomorrow ask Nephrite if he has time to look at the pump and—"

"Not about the pump! Like you said, screw the pump." He gave her another upside-down smile, his green eyes shining. "Today's our anniversary and I completely forgot."  
"Ah," Ami responded, briefly entertaining the idea of pretending that she didn't, but decided honesty might work better in her favor. "Actually, Ophelia reminded me," she reached over and plucked the photograph off of the nightstand. "But then I got distracted when Evander told me that he saw a cardinal…"

Zoisite took the photograph from her. "Hey, I remember this."

"Oh yeah?"

"What did you do with that shirt? It was one of my favorites."

"Are you serious?" She laughed. "I don't know! It probably got tossed. I can't believe you can look at a picture of the happiest moment of our lives and get all emotional over a long-dead shirt."

"That wasn't the happiest moment of my life."

"Really?" She kicked at his hand that was trying to stroke the back of her leg. "Then what was?"

He shrugged, his hand trying again to go for the goal. "This is. Right now."

After all these years, she still blushed at his words. "So anyway," he continued, still lying on his back. "It's my job to remember, so I have to make it up to you. Anything you want; name it."

Ami leaned back against the pillows. "What did you get me last year?"

"Uh…"

"Oh, never mind. Last year Tristan had a fever. What about the year before that?"

"Was that the day that a country that doesn't exist any more declared war on another country that doesn't exist any more and we had to go down and straighten them out?"

"No, that was my birthday. I think that year…Evander did something at school and we spent most of the night wondering where we screwed up raising him."

"You mean you did. All he did was smash another kid in the face with a lunch tray over some stupid grade school crap. Everyone does that at one point in their life." He started grabbing at the hem of her robe, which was pushed halfway up her thighs. "So tell me what you want. I'll do it."

She had an idea. "Without any debate?"

"This will probably come back to bite me, but yes, without debate."

She bent down, until her face was hovering over his by inches, and whispered her request against his cheek. His eyes widened.

"Really?" She nodded. He flipped over on the bed, raising to his hands and knees and crawled up until he had her pressed against the headboard. She raised a hand and entwined it in his damp hair, and ran her fingers through it, down his chest, across the hard muscles of his chest and stomach, down to the curve between his hips and pelvis before moving on. He was ready for her.

"Are you sure?" he said, before she pulled his face forward and kissed him fully on the mouth. She shrugged out of her robe.

"I'm sure."

His eyes were fixed on hers as he pulled her down underneath him. "I promised you anything." His lips kissed the warm pulse behind her ear. "I'll give it to you."

* * *

Ten months later, she held her anniversary gift to her chest, only minutes old, and looked down through her tears as she smiled. The infant let out a short cry, profoundly upset at the change of scenery and not particularly found of the noise, brightness, and chill of his new environment. Ami laughed when he threw his arms up in front of his face, trying to block out the new sensations, and kissed one of his tiny hands. "It's OK baby. Mommy's here."

Zoisite pressed his face against hers, reaching around her body to gently stroke the newborn's head. "How the hell am I supposed to top this next year?"

The baby scrunched his face and peeked out from slitted eyelids, still trying to make sense of his situation. Ami cradled her newest son to her chest and rocked him tenderly. "Twins, I guess."

* * *

AN: This is cute because it is true! A good friend of mine was an anniversary gift request by his mother.

ALSO: If anyone has any idea what to name this kid, please let me know. I have a tentative one in mind but I'm not attached to it, and I'm blanking here. Thanks for reading :)


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